Once again, it's time to take a quick spin around the National Football League and see where the pundits have ranked the Minnesota Vikings after last week's games.
As always, we'll start with the folks at the mothership at SB Nation. They weren't too terribly hard on the Vikings, as they only pushed the team down one spot to #25 after their 23-20 loss to Indianapolis.
Our friends at Daily Norseman say Christian Ponder is not the problem.
You're damn right they did! Well, you know, I did anyway. But I think most people agreed with that sentiment.
As Eric has already mentioned, he did his Power Rankings for SB Nation's Minnesota regional, dropping the Vikings down a whopping eight spots. That places them at #27.
So we rated them way too high last week at 19. Cut us some slack. We are a Minnesota site after all. Paging Jared Allen...no sight of him yet in the 2012 season.
And the sledding doesn't get any easier for him this week, it doesn't appear.
Most places are sort of in-between those two drops, and we'll see that as we round up a few more ranking after the jump.
Don Banks over at SI.com moved the Vikings down two spots from his rankings last week, pushing them to #26 from #24. His commentary focuses on a couple of the storylines for this week's game against the San Francisco 49ers.Given that he was a Raider, a Patriot, and briefly a Titan, I'm surprised to learn that Randy Moss has never visited the Metrodome as an opponent during the regular season, as he will this week with the 49ers. But the bigger story for the Vikings is actually how well quarterback Christian Ponder is playing in year two. Through two games, he's completing 75.8 percent of his passes for 8.3 yards per attempt, with two touchdowns, no picks and a 110.6 passer rating. Those are winning numbers.
So, hey, Randy Moss is coming back this week. I'm sure we won't hear anything about that over the next few days. And Banks seems to think that Christian Ponder is playing pretty well, too.
ESPN. . .and we all know how they view the Vikings anyway. . .moved Minnesota down one spot to #29.
Feeding the ball to Percy Harvin looks like a fine offensive strategy for the rebuilding Vikes.
Gee, you reckon? I would think getting Percy Harvin the ball would be a "fine offensive strategy" for any team that had Percy Harvin.
Pete Prisco over at CBS Sports isn't a big Vikings fan either, and moves Minnesota down one spot to #30 in his rankings this week.
They've played two close games, going 1-1. They are competing, even if their opponents so far haven't been top notch.
Can only play who's on the schedule. This week's game is going to be a big test.
NFL.com moves our favorite football team down three spots this week, dropping them from #23 to #26.
Minnesota ran out of luck in Indy on Sunday. Bad pun. But not as bad as all of us league analysts completely overlooking Christian Ponder's fine play through two games. His decision making has been mostly solid, and he's completing over 75 percent of his passes at eight-plus yards per throw. Those numbers are good enough for the Vikes to be 2-0. But they're not.
Again with the "Christian Ponder is playing pretty well" thing. If someone's not careful, that thing is going to catch on.
And those are some of the Minnesota Vikings' power rankings from around the NFL this week. If you've found any other ones, feel free to add them to the comments section here.